track in the
attempt to estimate the nature of sanctity and the results we may expect
from it. We shall expect nothing of spiritual value from force. We shall
be quite prepared to turn away from the governing parties in Jerusalem
as from those who have repudiated the divine method and are therefore
useless for the divine ends. We shall turn rather to those who gather
about the temple and there, in a life of prayer and meditation, wait for
the redemption. It is to these, who are the real temple of the Lord,
that the Lord "shall come suddenly," that the manifestation of God will
be made. And their hearts will overflow with joy as they behold the
fulfilment of the promises of God.

The power of God is the power of love; and it is that love, and that
love alone, that has won the victories of God. It is a very slow method,
men say. No doubt. But it is the only method that has any success. The
method of force seems effective; but its triumphs are illusory. Force
cannot make men love, it can only make them hate. The world is being won
to God by the love of God manifested in Christ Jesus our Lord. And it is
as well to remember, when we are tempted to complain of the slowness of
the process, that the slowness is ours, not God's. The process is slow
because men will not consent to become the instruments of God's love for
the world, will not transmit the crucified love of God's Son to their
fellows. They continually, in their impatience, revert to force of some
sort, for the attainment of spiritual ends. They become the tools of all
sorts of secular ambitions which promise support in return for their
co-operation. And the result may be read by any one not blinded by
prejudice in the futility and incompetence of modern religions of all
sorts. It is seen perhaps most of all in the pride of opinion which
keeps the Christian world in a fragmentary condition, and which
approaches the undoing of the sin of a divided Christendom with the
preliminary announcement that no separated body must be required to
admit that it has been in the wrong. Human disregard of the divine
method of love and humility can hardly go farther; and the only
practical result that can be expected to follow is such as followed from
the negotiations of Herod and Pontius Pilate--a new Crucifixion of the
Ever-sacrificed Christ.

We have risen to the divine method when we have learned to rely for
spiritual results upon God alone. Then is revealed to us the power of